Steppenwolf's Garage Rep 2012: He Who by Theatre Zarko

Appearing as part of Steppenwolf's third annual Garage Rep festival, featuring works from the most innovative local theater companies, He Who by Theatre Zarko Puppet Symbolist Theatre is a mash-up of live performance, inventive puppetry and original music. This world-premiere play tells the surrealist tale of a larger-than-life baby and the four identical women who attempt to meet his gargantuan needs, symbolizing the agonizing joys and challenges of motherhood as depicted through dream imagery. Writer-director Michael Montenegro was named Best Puppeteer in 2010 by the Chicago Reader for Theatre Zarko's Sublime Beauty of Hands and Klown Kantos performed at Evanston's Noyes Cultural Arts Center.

Went with a friend on a Friday night. The audience was packed. Everything about this play was great. The set, the costumes, especially the music. The storyline was oh so true. There were children in the audience and I'm not sure that was...continued

Description

How do four brave and exhausted women share the burden of one grotesquely enormous baby? They struggle to nurture and restrain the giant darling. But the baby has an existential crisis, which sparks a fight for control. His tyrannical attempts to pit the women against each other ultimately test the limits of love. Darkly poetic and arresting, He Who brings together live performers, puppets and original music for an intimate audience experience.

Master puppeteer Michael Montenegro conceives and directs this world premiere. For over twenty years, Jeff Award-winning puppet artist Michael Montenegro has been developing his unique style in the Chicago area—both as a solo artist and as a collaborator with different theatre groups and commissioned projects, culminating in the recent formation of his own company, Theatre Zarko. Works include Iktu Blas, __Dreams from an Upside Down Man and The Sublime Beauty of Hands__.

The He Who production team in includes: Michael Montenegro* (scenic design, costume design and casting) Jeff Glass (lighting design) and Jude Mathews*, Ben Goldberger* and Steve Lieto* (music).

Theatre Zarko explores puppet and mask theatre as an innovative, developing art form, with a focus on building strong artistic relationships within the community. Our work expresses a strong visual point of view that plays with scale, metaphor, integral live music and a surrealistic expression of images and themes.

*DenotesTheatre Zarko company members

About the Ticket Supplier: Steppenwolf

Steppenwolf Theatre Company is an internationally-renowned company of thirty-five artists whose talents include acting, directing, playwriting, filmmaking, and textual adaptation. Steppenwolf has redefined the landscape of acting and performance by spawning a generation of America's most gifted artists, including Joan Allen, John Mahoney, John Malkovich, Laurie Metcalf, Martha Plimpton and Gary Sinise. No other American theater ensemble has survived as long and thrived as much as the Steppenwolf company of artists, who return home to Chicago to do the work they love.